


even more exhausted than the average professor

by athenasdragon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chronic Illness, Gen, Light Angst, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 22:26:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14703708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: Remus Lupin wakes up after the full moon and still has a pile of papers to grade, which isn't really fair. Lycanthropy is totally a chronic illness you guys.





	even more exhausted than the average professor

**Author's Note:**

> A vignette about your favorite professor with lycanthropy written by your local chronically-ill TA! Usually there's a little more comfort with my hurt but I wrote the first half of this in the ER and that just wasn't my mood at the time.

Remus woke up and he vomited.

The sensation hit him before he even opened his eyes and he rolled over to the edge of the bed, his stomach contracting painfully to empty a few dribbles of acid into the waste bin.

Once that was over with he had a moment to breathe. He was tangled in his blankets, damp with sweat from nightmares and the morning sun streaming through the window. His head ached; his legs ached; every part of his abdomen ached. Contorting into an entirely different animal one night a month would do that to you.

He was in the bed in the corner of his office, and when he managed to prop himself up he could see down the sloping green grounds of the castle to the lake. It was a gorgeous fall morning. The dark, undulating pines of the Forbidden Forest were interspersed with brilliant spots of ruby and topaz. A few clouds skimmed across the sky, riding a breeze to some unknown destination across the horizon.

The sight was familiar enough to make Remus smile even as he struggled to ease himself completely upright. Every movement shot pain through his body and another wave of nausea through his stomach, which was, thankfully, completely empty. He swung his feet to the floor and let them rest on the cold stone while he examined them. No claws, no fur. Just normal, slightly nobbly human feet.

He gave himself time to adjust to this new position. Years ago, he had tried to push through the mornings as though nothing had happened, but more often than not that strategy ended with him unconscious on the floor until someone propped him up and forced some food into him. No one would come today—it was a Saturday, so he wasn’t expected in class, and he was sure that Dumbledore would have arranged to leave him undisturbed.

Speaking of food—his nausea was morphing into an unpleasant nausea-hunger hybrid that seemed to claw at his throat and warp the very shape of his stomach: an all-too familiar sensation that he would never grow accustomed to. Driven by his newfound desire for food, he pushed himself to his feet, staggered a few steps to his desk, and sat down heavily before the plate of muffins he had coaxed from the house elves in the kitchen the previous morning. He was desperate for a hot cup of tea, but the kettle was well out of reach and he couldn’t yet face the idea of retrieving his wand from his trunk, so he settled for flexing his cold-stiff fingers a few times and taking a long draught from a slightly dusty mug of water.

For a moment it seemed as though his stomach would reject it, but then the clawing sensation returned stronger than before and he could barely prevent himself from stuffing one of the muffins into his mouth whole. He settled for a single large bite, shivering as a draft cut straight through his threadbare pajamas. Chocolate chip: the closest he could justify to eating a bar of chocolate for breakfast.

Suddenly, the room pitched to one side, and Remus gripped the edge of his desk with a white-knuckled grip and forced his jaw to keep moving mechanically up and down. The room swung lazily to the other side, wobbled for a moment, and then the vertigo passed.

He passed the rest of the morning eating at a rate that wouldn’t make him ill and pausing occasionally to wince at a cramp or another round of dizziness. After every bite, he looked at the pile of parchment taunting him from across his desk. Essays on redcaps from his third-years, longer analyses of the proper wand motions for _expecto patronum_ from his seventh-years, and sitting on top a few short paragraphs on the student’s choice of fairy variety from his first-years. All of them were in need of marking.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to read them—quite the opposite. He had run into a group of first-years in the library a few days before, making an admirable effort on their first real research assignment but not accomplishing much more than annoying Madam Pince and accumulating a stack of useless books. Remus had covertly slid a few more relevant tomes onto their table and listened to their excited debates from an adjacent section. None of them lacked interest in the subject, and he was sure that it would shine through in their writing.

But still the parchment sat untouched on his desk. He felt guilty, given that his quill was perfectly within reach, but he hadn’t even mustered the energy to get dressed yet. The thought of reading through student essays, no matter how inexpertly enthusiastic, was not something he could face just yet.

Instead, he forced himself to stand and hobble over to find his wand. Now things could move a little faster; he set the kettle and lit the fire in the next room without having to drag himself over to the hearth. A few more flicks of his wand brought a worn but comfortable set of clothing flying through the air to land on his bed and emptied the waste basket.

Once dressed—an ordeal in and of itself—Remus looked over at the essays waiting on his desk and sighed. He _thumped_ back into his chair, twirling his wand a little absentmindedly to pour a cup of tea for himself while he pulled the parchment towards him with his other hand. The wind whistled outside and he shivered.

He could make it through the first-year essays, he told himself, even as his eyelids did their best to slide shut. A cup of tea would do wonders and he’d just leave simple comments at the end of each assignment.

The thought made him feel a little better about the whole lost morning, even if he knew that he would be asleep at his desk after reading half a dozen papers.


End file.
